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Boulder County checking post-flood status of creeks in rural communities

By John Fryar Longmont Times-Call

Posted:
11/30/2013 07:29:27 PM MST

Updated:
11/30/2013 07:30:26 PM MST

Lefthand Creek's original bed was located behind this home at 8785 Streamcrest Drive. The current position in front of this property has eliminated access to the home from Streamcrest Drive. The stream has undermined the foundation, and until the creek is repositioned, repairs cannot be initiated.

Residents of Boulder County neighborhoods crossed by the creeks that flooded in September can share creek-restoration questions and concerns with county officials this month.

Starting Tuesday night and continuing through Dec. 18, Boulder County will hold a series of community outreach meetings about the post-flood conditions of creeks in the county.

Some stretches of the creeks and rivers shifted into new channels that -- barring federal agencies' permission to return the stream segments to their original paths -- are having implications for the roads, culverts and bridges that need to be rebuilt or relocated to restore access to the private properties.

Floodwater-borne debris remains to be dredged and dragged out of the former and new stream channels and adjacent properties. Many septic systems were destroyed and may not be able to be reinstalled in their pre-flood locations.

Boulder County's Land Use, Transportation, and Parks and Open Space departments have launched what they say will be a comprehensive process of creek-restoration planning and flood preparedness. This month's meetings -- with one scheduled for each of seven neighboring areas adjacent to creeks crossing unincorporated parts of the county -- are intended to inform residents and property owners of government efforts and to hear what individual property owners' post-flood problems are.

"We want to understand what's on the ground," Sanfacon said -- including people's own reports of how creek channels and water elevations have changed, the debris and sediment that was left behind-- "so we can make informed decisions" about how to proceed.

The area between Middle Fork Road and Streamcrest Drive
contains obvious as well as hidden debris.

Property owners in at least one rural neighborhood, the Crestview Estates subdivision and nearby homes in an area southwest of Lefthand Canyon Drive and the North Foothills Highway -- have formed their own nonprofit organization, Lower Lefthand Flood Recovery, and have written Boulder County commissioners of the group's need for the county to help restore Lefthand Creek to its original channel and to help clear away debris.

With the variety of government agencies involved, "it doesn't seem like anybody knows who's going to take care of things," said Richard Blanchette, president of the Crestview Estates Residents Group.

Blanchette said in an interview that in the meantime, "we don't know if we can rebuild. We don't know if we can change the stream course back."

Lower Lefthand Flood Recovery chairman Paul Hendershott said the sand and gravel the floodwaters carried into the neighborhood are 10 or 12 feet deep in some areas directly alongside the creek.

Most agree there's a need to complete as many recovery projects as possible over the coming few months, before the runoffs from spring snowmelt begin pouring down.

"Spring seems a long ways away, but it isn't," Hendershott said.

Elsewhere, in the Raymond and Riverside areas of northwest Boulder County, many property owners sustained damage from the flooding of streams like the Middle St. Vrain Creek, said Longmont businessman Ron Cheyney, who has a cabin on the 500 block of Riverside Drive. Floods damaged a nearby retaining wall on the property.

"So many people up there lost bridges," Cheyney said, but "a big chunk" of that area's private property owners "have started to do their own work" on such projects as restoring at least temporary access to their properties.

"We've taken it upon ourselves to put things back where they were," Cheyney said

Boulder County transportation director George Gerstle said that with the changes in the creek channels and water depths and pathways -- along with the still-present debris -- the risks of floods during spring runoffs and after rainstorms could be greater than had been in the case before mid-September.

Moreover, when it comes to current creek conditions, what's done in one stretch affects what can happen both upstream and downstream, Gerstle said.

He said the first set of meetings are intended to help government officials and property owners "to start understanding community needs, and the trade-offs."

At the meetings, county officials are to share information about what they're calling a "Comprehensive Creek Planning Initiative" and how it relates to public infrastructure reconstruction, residential rebuilding, private access, and revised floodplain mapping of unincorporated areas of the county.

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